RISING Salisbury star John Bennett sealed his best result of the 2025 FIA Formula 2 Championship season so far at Spa-Francorchamps last weekend (July 26/27) with an impressive drive through the field at the famous Belgian F1 circuit.

John, 21, returned to mainland Europe for the ninth event of the 14-round campaign, fresh from competing in front of his home crowd at the British Grand Prix earlier in the month.

Bennett’s next assignment was two races around the world-famous Spa-Francorchamps in the Ardennes.

Backed by partners Pangea Insurance, StreetSharp Ltd, Lonetree Limited and Lewco Holdings Limited, Bennett again competed in front of huge crowds as part of the Formula 1 weekends.

He took to the track for the first time on Friday morning (July 25), gaining crucial knowledge in the F2 car in free practice at a venue where he claimed a pole position and two podium finishes in the GB3 Championship the season prior.

Qualifying was next for the Van Amersfoort Motorsport driver, and it all boiled down to the final runs on fresher tyres.

Bennett left the pits wanting to gain on his position, and a good improvement moved him up into the top 15, where he would start the weekend’s two races from.

Saturday hosted the first of those in the afternoon, that being the short 18-lap Sprint Race.

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Picture: James Gasperotti

From 15th place, Bennett gained ground initially with a safe run through La Source while others suffered ahead of him, only to have to take evasive action at the top of the daunting Eau Rouge corner to miss a spinning Richard Verschoor directly ahead of him.

He recovered to restart the encounter in 15th, gaining a place before another safety car appearance on lap 12.

This played into his hands, however, as he boxed along with many other rivals for a new set of Pirelli tyres.

The additional grip of fresher rubber underneath him paid dividends, as Bennett went on the attack in a fierce scrap with three cars on his way towards the top 10.

He rounded Josh Durksen first at Les Combes, then dispatched Jak Crawford at the final chicane and neatly slipped by Cian Shields shortly afterwards to sit just outside the top 10.

A slowing Trident car then proved easy pickings for Bennett, who could celebrate his best result of the season in ninth, narrowly missing out on scoring points.

Picture: James Gasperotti

The Feature Race on Sunday was the weekend’s final act, Bennett now with the luxury of strategy to consider in what proved a very wet 23-lap contest after heavens opened in the Ardennes.

With spray surrounding him, Bennett kept out of trouble and clambered neatly past Crawford early on, leaving his pit stop still inside the top 15.

After battling past Sami Meguetounif, late dramas ahead produced a safety car that would ultimately run to the very end of the race.

Bennett added P12 to his Saturday season-best to leave Belgium feeling optimistic, particularly having posted the fourth-fastest race laps in both the dry and wet conditions.

John said: “I think we can be very happy with the performance over the weekend.

“We’ve made progress in recent rounds, so to get our best result of the year is a bonus and we’ll keeping pushing towards the front and see what points we can achieve along the way.

“We found some pace towards the end in the last qualifying run that put us closer to where we wanted to be, and from then on it was full push to move forward at a track I’ve had good experiences at in recent years.

Picture: James Gasperotti

“We had a real fight with a lot of drivers in the second half of the race on Saturday, but I wasn’t going to be pushed around and we got the rewards at the end of it!

“The weather on Sunday was not great, but we kept it clean and I think we could have given the points-paying places a real fight in the last laps had the safety car not run to the end.

“Now we can look forward to getting straight back into action at Hungary, another track I’ve raced at already so hopefully we can hit the ground running.”

The next two FIA Formula 2 Championships races come immediately this weekend (August 1 to 3), the series supporting the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest.